Tesla confirms that work on Dojo 3 has officially resumed

Max Headroom 2026.01.20 3 min read

Tesla has restarted work on its Dojo 3 initiative, its in-house AI training supercomputer, now that its AI5 chip design has reached a stable stage.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed the update in a recent post on X.

Tesla’s Dojo 3 initiative restarted

In a post on X, Musk said that with the AI5 chip design now “in good shape,” Tesla will resume work on Dojo 3. He added that Tesla is hiring engineers interested in working on what he expects will become the highest-volume AI chips in the world.

“Now that the AI5 chip design is in good shape, Tesla will restart work on Dojo3. If you’re interested in working on what will be the highest volume chips in the world, send a note to AI_Chips@Tesla.com with 3 bullet points on the toughest technical problems you’ve solved,” Musk wrote in his post on X.

Musk’s comment followed a series of recent posts outlining Tesla’s broader AI chip roadmap. In another update, he stated that Tesla’s AI4 chip alone would achieve self-driving safety levels well above human drivers, AI5 would make vehicles “almost perfect” while significantly enhancing Optimus, and AI6 would be focused on Optimus and data center applications.

Musk then highlighted that AI7/Dojo 3 will be designed to support space-based AI compute.

Now that the AI5 chip design is in good shape, Tesla will restart work on Dojo3.

If you’re interested in working on what will be the highest volume chips in the world, send a note to AI_Chips@Tesla.com with 3 bullet points on the toughest technical problems you’ve solved.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 18, 2026

AI4 by itself will achieve self-driving safety levels very far above human.

AI5 will make the cars almost perfect and greatly enhance Optimus.

AI6 will be for Optimus and data centers.

AI7/Dojo3 will be space-based AI compute.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 18, 2026

Tesla’s AI roadmap

Musk’s latest comments helped resolve some confusion that emerged last year about Project Dojo’s future. At the time, Musk stated on X that Tesla was stepping back from Dojo because it did not make sense to split resources across multiple AI chip architectures.

He suggested that clustering large numbers of Tesla AI5 and AI6 chips for training could effectively serve the same purpose as a dedicated Dojo successor. “In a supercomputer cluster, it would make sense to put many AI5/AI6 chips on a board, whether for inference or training, simply to reduce network cabling complexity & cost by a few orders of magnitude,” Musk wrote at the time.

Musk later reinforced that idea by responding positively to an X post stating that Tesla’s AI6 chip would effectively be the new Dojo. Considering his recent updates on X, however, it appears that Tesla will be using AI7, not AI6, as its dedicated Dojo successor. The CEO did state that Tesla’s AI7, AI8, and AI9 chips will be developed in short, nine-month cycles, so Dojo’s deployment might actually be sooner than expected.